Hello:

I'm a newcomer to this forum. The past few years I have been more involved in Quality Assurance, training and management for an acute care facility account using voice recognition technology but find myself looking into getting back into actual transcription, my first love, not VR-editing hopefully. In looking into the financial end of this, I'm not entirely sure what the cpl for transcription is these days, having had to work strictly with voice recognition. When I got out of hands on transcription personally, it was 9 cpl. Can anyone give me some idea of what a realistic expectation would be at this point in time. It would be most appreciated. Thanks-Typesmedical

Hi typesmedical,

You might be able to get 9 cpl if you look hard, but I think the going rate is more like 7-8 cpl, and the bigger services don't figure experience into the equation either.

Also, the bigger services have gone more and more to VR and they pay like 4-6 cpl for editing. The QA jobs seem to pay better than MT overall, from what I have seen. And don't forget you would most probably be on production and that figure seems tp rise every year.

Hope that answers your questions.

Thanks, kkb, for the response. Doesn't sound at all encouraging, does it? But to be forewarned is to be forearmed I guess.

No, not encouraging at all. That's why I am no longer an MT--my whole department at the hospital where I worked was outsourced and I could not live on what the national services are paying compared to what my previous job paid. I really loved MT too but after the reduction in cpl (from 14 cents to 8 cents) and a $400 monthly increase in health insurance premiums, MT did not provide a livable wage for me.

It might work for someone who lives in an area with a lower cost of living, though. Up here we have high property taxes, high heating costs, high food costs, and our cars rust out faster.

I wish you luck, though! Hopefully your experience will be better than mine!